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P O L I T I C S S T U D Y G U I D E S
Political
Communication
Steven Foster
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Political Communication
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Books in the Politics Study Guides series
British Government and Politics: A Comparative Guide
Duncan Watts
International Politics: An Introductory GuideAlasdair Blair
US Government and Politics: Second EditionWilliam Storey
Britain and the European UnionAlistair Jones
The Changing ConstitutionKevin Harrison and Tony Boyd
Democracy in BritainMatt Cole
Devolution in the United KingdomRussell Deacon and Alan Sandry
Electoral Systems and Voting in BritainChris Robinson
The Judiciary, Civil Liberties and Human RightsSteven Foster
Political CommunicationSteven Foster
Political Parties in Britain
Matt ColeThe Politics of Northern IrelandJoanne McEvoy
Pressure GroupsDuncan Watts
The Prime Minister and CabinetStephen Buckley
The UK ParliamentMoyra Grant
The American PresidencyDuncan Watts
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Political Communication
Steven Foster
Edinburgh University Press
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Steven Foster, 2010
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh
www.euppublishing.com
Typeset in 11/13pt Monotype Baskerville by
Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and
printed and bound in Great Britain byCPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 2571 0 (paperback)
The right of Steven Foster to be identified as author of
this work has been asserted in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Published with the support of the Edinburgh University Scholarly
Publishing Initiatives Fund.
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vi Political Communication
Political advertising: an evaluation and appraisal 71
Conclusion 74
5 News Management: the Rise of the Spin Doctor 77
Making the news 78
Spinning 84
Monitoring and rebuttal 85
Image management 89
Conclusion 94
6 Government Communications 97 The governments media machine 98
Millbankisation andWashingtonisation: the
transformation of government communications after
1997 103
After hubris, nemesis 109
A public relations state 114
Conclusion 118
7 Media Bias 121
Deconstructing the concept 122
Partisan bias: the case of the British press 123
Propaganda bias 130
Ideological bias: the Bad News studies 136
Conclusion 138
8 Media Power and Media Effects: Theories and
Realities 141
Media effects: some general theories 142
Media effects and elections 144
The media and the political agenda 148
Side effects: the media and the crisis of political
communications 151
Final effects: the media and political society 155
Conclusion 157
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Contents vii
9 Media Policy (1): Ownership 159
Media ownership in perspective 160
Government policy on newspaper ownership 162
Trends in newspaper ownership: sectoral concentration
and the loss of diversity 165
The irresistible rise of cross-media ownership 170
Ownership: why it matters 174
Conclusion 176
10 Media Policy (2): Control 179 Media freedom and democratic politics 180
Regulating the print media 182
A back door privacy law? 188
Broadcasting: state-imposed impartiality 189
Due impartiality: the case for reform 193
Afterword 196
References 199
Index 204
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Boxes
1.1 The defining characteristics of the pre-modern era 5
1.2 Modern political communication 6
1.3 The Political Parties, Elections and Referendums
Act 2000 10
1.4 The power of television 12
1.5 An uneasy transition: internal party resistance to
modern political communication 151.6 Selected features of the post-modern paradigm 18
2.1 Devising the strategic brief 24
2.2 The issues shaping Labours 1997 communication
strategy 25
2.3 The long campaign in 20045 27
2.4 Categories of opinion research 29
2.5 Private opinion research and the 2005 general election 31
2.6 The communication strategies of the product-,
sales- and market-orientated parties 32
3.1 Targeting in the 2005 general election 46
3.2 Left on the net 51
4.1 The impact of the Saatchis on political broadcasting 64
4.2 The biopic 64
4.3 Labour and Conservative party choice of advertising
agencies in UK general elections 695.1 The sequence of press conferences during the 1997
general election 79
5.2 Prioritising the news 80
5.3 The decline of the political interview 81
5.4 Shaping the news cycle 83
5.5 Alastair Campbell and the dark arts 86
5.6 Image manufacture 90
5.7 When it all goes wrong: the case of Neil Kinnock 92
5.8 Reforming the party: Labour under Tony Blair 93
6.1 Selected offences under the Official Secrets Act 99
6.2 The law on compulsory disclosure of sources and
source material 100
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Boxes ix
6.3 A strategic capacity: strengthening the centre,
December 1997 to March 1999 106
6.4 Overspin: Labours second-term difficulties 111
6.5 Campbell, Rageh Omar and reporting the Taliban 113
6.6 The Phillis Report 115
6.7 Government communications under Brown 117
7.1 A typology of bias 124
7.2 Framing news items 131
7.3 The Bad News studies 137
8.1 Competing models of media influence 143
8.2 Media influence on the political agenda(selected examples) 149
8.3 Campaign finance 152
8.4 Criteria of newsworthiness 155
9.1 The regulation of newspaper ownership 163
9.2 The industrialisation of the press 164
9.3 The fate of theNews on Sunday 169
9.4 The BBCs Charter and Framework Agreement 170
9.5 The deregulation of broadcasting 171
9.6 The structure of television broadcasting in the UK 173
10.1 David Feldman on media freedom 181
10.2 Reporting elections 182
10.3 The PCC Code 183
10.4 Investigative journalism and the criminal law: the key
offences 187
10.5 A back door privacy law: the key cases 19010.6 Taking political control of broadcasting content 191
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Tables
1.1 Party identification: 19642005 7
1.2 Electoral volatility: 19642001 8
1.3 Party membership: 19872005 9
1.4 The growth of expenditure by party headquarters
(selected general elections) 11
1.5 Selected items of campaign expenditure in the 2001
and 2005 general elections 17 2.1 Central campaign expenditure of the nationalist
parties of Scotland and Wales (selected items) 28
3.1 Sources of political information over the general
election campaigns 1997, 2001 and 2005 43
3.2 Traffic figures for the websites of the major parties
(August 2007) 52
4.1 Televised party election broadcasts and the 2005
general election 62
4.2 The penetration of party election broadcasts 66
4.3 Political advertising in national daily and weekly
newspapers (general elections only) 67
4.4 Voters having seen billboard advertisements 68
4.5 The relative persuasiveness of political advertising 72
4.6 The cost and rewards of political advertising in the
2005 general election 74 6.1 CIO expenditure 102
7.1 Newspaper interest in general elections 125
7.2 Changing patterns of newspaper bias 127
8.1 A Suneffect? 145
8.2 Sources of information during the 2005 general
election 148
9.1 National newspaper circulation: February 2007
February 2009 161
9.2 The decline of newspaper titles: 19212002 165
9.3 Declining circulation in the Scottish press (March 2009) 166
9.4 The leading newspaper groups in the UK 167
10.1 Handling complaints: the PCC and Ofcom (2008) 186
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Preface
The purpose of this book became clear when I finally settled on a
title. Though it doesnt say much about my skills as a writer, complet-
ing this seemingly simple task had proved elusive. At first, I had been
minded to persuade the Series Editor and the staff at Edinburgh
University Press to abandon the working title and instead publish
it as The Politics of the Media. Yet upon further reflection I felt that a
specific reference to the media would obscure what it was I was reallytrying to achieve. This is not to say that the media does not figure
prominently in what follows. However, political communication
a more complex and expansive concept encapsulates more
accurately the books main subject. This addresses the way in which
politicians attempt to communicate their messages to an increasingly
sceptical and disengaged electorate and the implications this has for
a wide range of associated issues: their relations with journalists,
our understanding of media bias and effects, government policy on
media ownership and content, and so on.
Nor can the topicality of political communication be seriously
questioned. Anyone with the slightest interest in UK politics over
the last decade will be aware that political communication has
become one of the defining issues of the era. To repackage Marshall
McLuhans famous dictum: the medium has once again become
the message. The communication strategy adopted by Tony BlairsLabour party has played the key part in this process. Blair and his
team showed the UK just how sophisticated a modern political
communications strategy can become. Subsequent changes to the
very language of politics tell their own tale. If few of us had heard
of them before, it was not long before the terms spin doctor and,
more simply, spin entered everyday usage. In the process, some of
its most celebrated practitioners Peter Mandelson, Charlie Whelan,
Jo Moore and, most especially, Alastair Campbell became some of
the most talked about political actors in the UK.
However, towards the end of the Blair era, these terms had taken
on a more serious connotation. In the aftermath of the invasion
of Iraq and the tragic death of Dr David Kelly, Blair ended his
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xii Political Communication
premiership mired in a controversy which extended beyond ques-
tions of his personal integrity and on to the constitutional propriety
of the large communications operation that followed him into office.
There is, of course, a strange irony in this. Despite the accusations
that he routinely and successfully manipulated journalists in a bid
to gain short-term political advantage, by the time he left office his
relationship with large sections of the media had broken down. It
was wholly fitting, therefore, that his final keynote speech sought to
initiate a debate on what he considered to be the near impossibility
of conducting open and serious political discourse in the face of an
unscrupulous, market-driven and feral media beast. There was atacit acknowledgment in all this that Blair and his communication
strategists may have contributed to their own problems. At the same
time, he left his audience in no doubt that he, Campbell and the
others were much more sinned against than sinning. Consequently,
three years after his resignation as prime minister, this might be a
timely moment to consider the nature of contemporary political com-
munication and, more importantly, the role it plays in the conduct of
British politics in the first decade of the twenty-first century.
As is so often the case when a book is published in this respect,
at least, this author is no different from any other there are many
whose support and encouragement must be acknowledged. Firstly,
I should once again like to thank my old friend and series editor,
Duncan Watts, for his guidance and tolerance, hoping that he finds
in this work at least one or two items that bear favourable com-
parison with his own. Secondly, Nicola Ramsey, James Dale andtheir colleagues at Edinburgh University Press have once again
shown seemingly limitless forbearance and the highest standards
of professionalism in making good my deficiencies. Thirdly, despite
the unexpected twists and turns in my teaching career, I am ever
mindful of the continuous debt I owe to my colleagues in the Politics
Department at the Manchester Grammar School. The Department
and indeed the wider community of the Manchester Grammar
School was rocked by the sudden and most untimely death of its
founding head, Dr Rod Martin, which occurred whilst this book
was nearing completion. It is only fitting, therefore, that I take this
opportunity to record Rods remarkable contribution to the life of
the school and, beyond that, to political education across the UK. It
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Preface xiii
is something of an understatement to add that he played a pivotal
role in the development of my own career and that he will be most
sorely missed.
Further, and on a different note, Lynn and Kathryn have suffered
much in the making of what the latter (ominously from the point of
view of future sales) describes as this boring book. Perhaps one or
both of them might eventually decide that their relative deprivation
was worthwhile. Finally, the older I get, clearer still becomes the debt
I owe my parents. Consequently, it is to my mother and the memory
of my late father that this book is dedicated.
SF
Bramhall, Cheshire
September 2009
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Introduction
Whilst all of this book has in some way been influenced by its central
theme (how politicians seek to communicate their political messages),
its content has been divided into three quite distinctive parts. The
first of these examines political communication from the perspec-
tive of parties competing to win elections. It focuses, in other words,
on how parties organise their internal communications in order to
realise their political goals. With this in mind, I do not think I amoverstretching the bounds of literary convention by opening with
a chapter that sets party political communication in its proper his-
torical context. Chapter 1 duly maps the main changes that have
occurred since 1918, whilst also seeking to identify the combination
of push and pull factors that helped to bring them about.
Chapters 2 to 4 build on these foundations by examining some
of the key features of party political communication. There is an
element of selection in this. Nonetheless, I am confident that my
choice of subject matter will provide the reader with at least some
insight into the complex nature of modern political communication.
Chapter 2 kicks off this process by studying the way in which political
communication is subject to extensive strategic planning. It focuses
in particular on the way in which this strategic dimension depends
upon private opinion research and highly centralised campaign
management. Chapter 3 fulfils a similar function in respect of con-stituency campaigning in the digital age, whilst Chapter 4 examines
the main elements of what Dominic Wring has called the control-
led elements of political marketing: party broadcasts and political
advertising. Chapter 5 returns to the main theme by exploring the
techniques deployed by politicians in their bid to influence the all-
important news agenda. Inevitably, this chapter focuses heavily on
the work of press and publicity officers (a somewhat austere descrip-
tion of spin doctors) and the sophisticated systems of rebuttal and
news management they have put in place. In this way, Chapter 5
sets the scene for Chapter 6, which looks at the way in which these
techniques were incorporated into government communication after
1997. This aspect of the Blair years has given rise to considerable
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2 Political Communication
comment. Consequently, Chapter 6 will review these developments
and hopefully shed a little light on why they are mired in so much
controversy.
In the course of this analysis it will become quite clear to the
reader that the dominant trend within what we might call party polit-
ical communication is media management. So important are medi-
ated communications, the process by which parties communicate
to voters through the media, that it is quite impossible to conceive
of political communication outside the nexus linking politician and
journalist. This explains the nature of the second part of the book.
Here, I set out to explore in more detail why politicians put so mucheffort into managing the media, something which draws out a discus-
sion of those two perennially important issues: media bias and media
influence. The first of these is examined in Chapter 7, the second in
Chapter 8.
The third and final part of the book takes the relationship
between politicians and media one stage further by examining gov-
ernment media policy. In particular, it seeks to identify the extent to
which, given that media management is so fundamental to political
communication, government has manipulated the law on ownership
and media content to its advantage. Chapter 9 looks at the law on
ownership, whilst Chapter 10 completes the book with an examina-
tion of the complementary issue of content regulation.
I can make no claim that this study provides an original, leave
alone a definitive account, of a complex and fascinating area of
contemporary politics. I have had to be highly selective in my finalchoice of material and am only too aware that the book is open to a
number of criticisms on this count alone. In particular, I have largely
neglected political communication outside the party political arena,
whilst, within it, I have devoted disproportionate attention to the
major parties. At the same time, I have done my utmost to remain
true to the central aim of the Political Study Guides series and
produce a volume that presents the more ambitious student (and the
interested general reader happily freed from the constraints of exam
preparation) with a challenging introduction. I can only hope that
my efforts have not been wholly in vain.
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CHAPTER 1
Party Political Communication inHistorical Perspective
Contents
Pre-modern to modern 4Explaining the transition: push and pull factors 6Uneven development 13Targeting and niche marketing: a post-modern paradigm? 16
Conclusion 20
Overview
This chapter charts the recent history of party political communication inthe UK. It seeks to map the key changes and explain why some analystshave organised these into three successive phases: pre-modern, modernand post-modern. In this way, it serves as a preview for the more detailedanalyses which follow over the next five chapters.
Key issues to be covered in this chapter
The distinguishing features of the pre-modern and modern eras The factors which explain the emergence of the modern The uneven nature of change during this period of transition The post-modern thesis and its implications for our understanding of
current trends in party political communication
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4 Political Communication
Pre-modern to modern
The concept of party political communication is defined by its rela-
tionship to voters and voting behaviour. As Denver (2007: 125) notes,
communicating with voters in the hope of influencing their behav-
iour is as old as competitive politics itself: For as long as there have
been contested elections . . . those standing for election and their
supporters have endeavoured . . . to persuade the relevant electorate
to vote for them. It follows that, as elections became more competi-
tive, politicians sought more efficient means of communicating their
messages. This was especially so during the late nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries, when franchise reform created a much larger
and socially diverse electorate. In turn, this triggered a wide-ranging
and imaginative response, most notably from the Conservative party
(Crockett 1994).
However, despite the upsurge in interest in political communica-
tion after World War I, Norris (1997) still prefers to describe this
period as pre-modern (see Box 1.1), an era which survived more
or less intact until the late 1950s. More than that of any other
individual, it is the career of Harold Macmillanwhich marks the
transition to a distinctively modern era of political communication.
When Macmillan assumed the premiership on 10 January 1957, his
political inheritance was decidedly gloomy. In the aftermath of the
Suezcrisis, support for the Conservatives had plummeted, leaving
Labour confident of overturning their 68-seat deficit whenever a
general election was called. In the event, however, Macmillan easilysaw off Labours challenge. More importantly, he did so using
techniques that suggested that party political communication had
jettisoned the old methods (Rosenbaum 1997: 58; Wring 2005:
4850).
The main features of the modern era are described in some detail
in Box 1.2. One particularly striking break with the past was the
emergence of distinctly national campaigning. This suggested that
political communication had become too important to be left in the
hands of individual candidates and their bands of local volunteers.
This also explains some of the other defining features of the modern
era such as the growing prominence of marketing professionals,
private opinion research and national advertising.
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Historical Perspective 5
However, the single most important change concerned the means
by which campaign messages were communicated. The pre-modern
era was quintessentially the era of retail politics, where parties were
sold on doorsteps and in meeting rooms up and down the country.
By contrast, in the modern era parties increasingly designed their
communications around the needs of the print and especially the
broadcast media. Rather than focusing their efforts on communicat-ing directly with voters, instead they preferred to channel their mes-
sages via journalists, the loss of editorial control being compensated
for by better and more efficient access.
Box 1.1 The defining characteristics of the pre-modern era
Retail politics
Communication was largely undertaken by small armies of willing
volunteers seeking direct contact with voters in a bid to sell
their parties candidates. Political advertising was notably under-
utilised.
Limited central coordination
Overarching communication strategies and centralised campaign
management were conspicuous only by their absence.
The relative absence of communication professionals
Politicians were confident in their own abilities to understand the
electoral mood. Consequently, marketing and public relations (PR)
also played limited parts in the communications process.
Non-mediated communication
Little thought was given to the needs of the media who, where this
was permitted, were expected to report politicians speeches moreor less verbatim.
A narrow time-frame
Communications focused on the three- to four-week official cam-
paign. There was no sense that campaigning should be extended
over a longer period, leave alone that it should become a permanent
feature of day-to-day politics.
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6 Political Communication
Explaining the transition: push and pull factorsThis transformation was the result of a combination of push and
pull factors. The former undermined the viability of pre-modern
communications; the latter reinforced this by giving campaign
managers positive reasons for change.
Box 1.2 Modern political communication
The strategic dimension
Modern political communication has a strong strategic element. This
is devised by national campaign teams and is invariably built around
the characteristics of individual party leaders.
Professionalisation
Large teams of professional advisors are sine qua nonfor modern
communication. Their presence is felt throughout the campaign, but
especially in political advertising and media management.
The long campaign
Modern communication strategies commence some time in advance
of the official campaign. One reason for this is the important strategic
goal of setting a favourable media agenda.
Opinion research and marketing
Communication strategies exploit modern marketing techniques,
especially opinion research. Above all, these are designed to encour-age target voters to associate a party with certain qualities, for
example reasonableness, integrity and competence.
National advertising
This is prominent and carefully designed to reinforce the central
campaign messages. Adverts do not advocate policies but are
instead heavily image-based and shaped around simple slogans.
Mediated communicationsModern communication is highly attuned to the needs of the media,
especially television. The goal of press and publicity officers (spin
doctors) is to set the medias agenda, ensuring that the headlines
are dominated by stories which play to their partys advantage.
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Historical Perspective 7
Dealignment
Perhaps the decisive push factor was the emergence of a dealigned
electorate. Pre-modern campaigners had made a number of assump-
tions about voters and their behaviour. This was encapsulated in the
concept of party identification, described by Denver (2007: 84) as a
sea anchor tying voters to their parties for life. Dealignmentchal-
lenged these assumptions by insisting that the anchor had worked
itself loose, the implication being that voters are likely to be more
open to persuasion, more indecisive about which party to vote forand more likely to switch parties (2007: 84).
Further, dealignment pointed to an array of other important
social and cultural changes, including widespread disengagement
from mainstream ideologies and an anti-party Zeitgeist, in which
party propaganda was invariably met with cynical disbelief (Lees-
Marshment 2001: 224). Communicating with the electorate in such
circumstances presented parties with challenges on a scale not seen
since World War I. Most importantly, it no longer seemed credible to
mount a retail campaign based on historic beliefs and aimed more or
less exclusively at traditional voting groups. Indeed, on the last occa-
sion a major party attempted this (Labour in June 1983), it suffered
its worst defeat for half a century.
Table 1.1 Party identification: 19642005 (figures aspercentage of the electorate)
Strength of
identification
1964 February
1974
1983 1992 2005
Very strong 44 30 22 18 8
Fairly strong 40 43 41 45 37
Not very strong 11 18 24 27 36
Expressing someidentification 95 91 87 80 81
Expressing no
identification
5 9 13 20 19
(Source: Allen 2006: 58)
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8 Political Communication
Equally, however, dealignment was not all bad news. Prior to
1970, there seemed little incentive in trying to persuade wide sec-
tions of a largely stable electorate to change their views. Thereafter,
in an age when as many as one in four voters routinely switched
allegiance, parties had every reason to seek out new groups of sup-
porters. Margaret Thatcher understood this quicker than most,
which was one reason why her Conservative party trounced Labour
so thoroughly in the years between 1979 and 1987.
The eclipse of the activist-ideological party
The effects of dealignment were compounded by the dramatic reduc-
tion in the capacity of constituency parties to mount meaningful
Table 1.2 Electoral volatility: 19642001 (figures aspercentage of the electorate)
General electionSwitched
parties
Made final
choice during
the campaign
Considered
voting for
another party
1964 18 12 25
1966 10 11 23
1970 16 12 21
Average: 196470 14.7 11.7 23.0
February 1974 24 23 25
October 1974 16 22 21
1979 22 28 31
1983 23 22 25
1987 19 24 28
1992 19 24 26
1997 25 27 31
2001 22 26 not available
2005 25 33 not available
Average: 19742005 21.7 25.4 26.7
(Source: Denver 2007: 87, 90)
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Historical Perspective 9
campaigns at that level. One reason for this was long-term decline in
the number of people joining their local parties. By the mid-1970s,
the Conservatives had lost over half their post-war membership,
Labour a third since when the general trend has continued down-
wards. Further, relatively few of those members who remain are
likely to be active. In 2005, for example, it was estimated that, with
70,000 voters in an average constituency, candidates typically had 42
campaign workers at their disposal prior to polling day (Fisher et al.
2005: 67). The limitations this placed on local campaigning can be
all too easily guessed at, the chief casualty being the tradition of mass
canvassing. Since local parties lacked the capacity to persuadevoters,canvassers simply used contacts to record their voting intentions.
Yet, whilst the lost membership was no doubt regretted, it is
doubtful whether national campaign managers would have contin-
ued to trust local volunteers even where the latter retained a strategic
campaigning capacity. This is so because the era of dealignment
coincided with the collapse of historic ideological divisions between
the main parties, with the result that elections now turn largely on
competing claims of managerial competence. Communicating the
latter is not easy. In particular, it draws heavily on both the latest
marketing techniques and the media, something which places a huge
premium on presentation and demands a very different set of skills
to those held by local volunteers.
Table 1.3 Party membership: 19872005
Year Conservatives
(000s)
Labour
(000s)
Liberal
Democrats
(000s)
1987 1,000 289 138
1992 500 280 100
1997 400 405 100
2001 350 311 902005 320 215 73
(Source: Allen 2006: 66)
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10 Political Communication
The law and party funding
Happily for the parties, developments elsewhere pulled them towards
a new mode of communication just when the latter was most needed.
This process originated in an important clarification of electoral law.
Until 1952, it was believed to be unlawful for national party organisa-
tions to spend money on political communication once a campaign had
formally begun. This belief, combined with the tight statutory controls
on constituency campaign expenditure, had seriously hampered
the development of expansive communications strategies. In 1952,
however, the case of Rv. Tronah Minesestablished the principle
that national party organisations could indeed promote their owncampaigns without committing any offence. Party headquarters were
now free to spend what they liked both before and during election
campaigns, providing of course they could first raise the money
It took the main parties until February 1974 to fully appreciate the
implications of Tronah Mines.However, after this point they consist-
ently demonstrated the ability to accumulate considerable campaign
war chests, albeit at the risk of their long-term financial health to
say nothing of their integrity. By 1997, the fundraisers had done their
work so well that Parliament voted to place the first statutory limits
on national campaign expenditure (Box 1.3). All the same, it cannot
be credibly argued that a ceiling of 18 million will seriously com-
promise the tradition of ambitious national campaigning.
Box 1.3 The Political Parties, Elections and ReferendumsAct 2000
In the aftermath of the 1997 general election, a chorus of opinion
demanded that national campaign expenditure be properly regulated.
The result was the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act
2000 (PPERA), which duly placed a cap on the campaign expendi-
ture of party headquarters. In the year before a general election (the
regulated period falls to four months for other contests), no party
can spend more than 30,000 for each constituency contested, up
to a maximum of 18.84 million in Great Britain and 540,000 inNorthern Ireland.
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Historical Perspective 11
Political television: the road from Rochdale
National campaign budgets of this scale have been used to finance
the exercises in marketing, advertising and above all public relations,
which together have redefined the nature of party political commu-
nication. In turn, these developments are rooted in the revolution in
broadcasting-content regulations which finally permitted television
and radio journalists to report elections as they were happening.
Before the mid-1950s, broadcasters were prevented from the contem-
poraneous coverage of election contests. This prohibition was strongly
associated with Lord Reith. Yet, like so many other aspects of hislegacy, it did not long survive the arrival of commercial television in
1955. The first indication of this was the 1958 Rochdale by-election.
Granada Television, which held the local ITV franchise, decided to
broadcast two candidate debates together with the count. Not wishing
to be outdone, the BBC broadcast interviews with a number of
voters. The result of the contest a Labour gain at the expense of the
Conservatives was far less important than the fact that legal action
was not taken against the television producers, effectively giving them
a green light to extensively cover the general election held eighteen
months or so later. UK politicians could now entertain the prospect
of following their North American counterparts and re-route their
political messages via this most powerful medium.
Table 1.4 The growth of expenditure by party headquarters(selected general elections)
Year Conservative () Labour ()
1950 135,000 84,000
1959 631,000 239,000
1970 630,000 526,000
1979 2,333,000 1,566,000
1992 11,196,000 10,597,000
2005 17, 859,000 17,940,000
(Source: Butler 1995: 86; Electoral Commission)
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12 Political Communication
Box 1.4 The power of television
Efficiency
Television scores heavily in what Negrine (1994: 154) calls its imme-
diacy and universality. The overwhelming majority of voters can
access television sets and are exposed to a remarkable amount of
political coverage as a consequence.
Psychology
Television is a visual medium and research tells us that images are much
more compelling than the spoken word. To cite but one recent study: 53per cent of respondents were influenced most by image; 32 per cent by
how they were addressed; and a mere 7 per cent by what was said to
them (Jones 2006: 224, 226). Moving images are more compelling still.
With a sound bite that could form the opening to a spin doctors manual,
Rosenbaum concludes that A picture is worth a thousand words, but a
moving picture is worth ten thousand (1997: 81).
Compatibility with the Zeitgeist
Voter attitudes are seemingly shaped by a range of cultural con-straints, including: a shorter attention span; a reluctance to con-
sider issues in depth; and a greater capacity to absorb information
quickly. Politicians know they have at most 20 seconds to make a
significant impact. However, providing they link powerful images to
a memorable phrase or sound bite, even 20 seconds of exposure on
television offers a greater capacity to reach target voters than any
other medium.
Enhanced ability to shape the political agendaWhilst there remains considerable debate over the ability of televi-
sion to tell voters what to think, it has an obvious potential to tell
them what to think about. Television has thus moved into the vacuum
created by the decline of alternative sources of opinion: community
leaders, religious organisations and trade unions.
Perceptions of impartiality
Television is widely accepted by the electorate as impartial and
hence trustworthy.
Cost-effectiveness
Communication mediated via television remains far cheaper than
other forms of campaigning, especially political advertising.
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Historical Perspective 13
The North American analogy is important, since it is the USA
which provides the first major example of televisions power. On 23
September 1952, Republican vice-presidential candidate Richard
Nixon used television to address directly 60 million US voters,
accompanied by one of the most famous props in television history:
a small dog named Checkers. Accused of campaign finance abuses,
Nixon was in deep political trouble. However, rather than rebut
the charges directly, Nixon wrong-footed his opponents by appear-
ing to confess on air that his family had indeed received gifts from
well-wishers, including the aforementioned Checkers. Nixon then
defiantly stated that, whatever his opponents might say, he would bekeeping the dog. Checkers, or so it would seem, had stolen the hearts
of his young daughters; the implication being that Nixon would risk
political ruin rather than upset his children. With the small dog now
almost symbolising his integrity, Nixon effectively asked a simple yet
unanswerable question: how could such a man, a loving and self-
sacrificing parent, be guilty of the things that they are accusing him
of ?
At a stroke and a master one at that Nixon demonstrated some
of the fundamental truths about televisual communication: speak to
viewers as one individual to another; avoid drawn out explanations;
use imagery rather than words; and above all, rehearse and revise
your techniques. In the years which followed, analyses of political
communication soon took for granted TVs unrivalled communi-
cative power (Negrine 1994: 154). New generations of politicians
responded by spending small fortunes on securing the skills of mediaadvisers and public relations gurus. Jones (2006: 224) captures their
mindset when he writes that: Two minutes of exposure on peak time
television enables politicians to reach more people than they could in
a lifetime of canvassing, handshaking or addressing public meetings.
The task facing parties was to provide television producers with the
material they required for their programming and in this way steer
the political agenda in the desired direction.
Uneven development
It would, however, be a mistake to imagine that the emergence of the
modern era was an even and consistent process. Complacency played
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14 Political Communication
a part in this. After their 1959 success the Conservatives erroneously
concluded they had mastered the new techniques and duly allowed
the initiative to pass to Labour. This pattern then repeated itself, but
in reverse order; its triumphs in 1964 and again in 1966 having a
similarly soporific effect on Labour. The Conservatives, meanwhile,
overhauled their campaign organisation and set about constructing
the strategy which restored them to power in 1970.
Equally, however, modernisation was hampered by internal oppo-
sition. This was most famously so in the case of the Labour party
between 1970 and 1994 (Gould 1988). In his account of the emer-
gence of New Labour, Philip Gouldpoints out that he had beencommissioned by Peter Mandelson as early as 1985 to find out why
so many working-class voters had abandoned the party. However,
despite the positive reception his work received from Mandelson and
the then Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, Gould doubts whether his
findings were ever properly incorporated into the partys communi-
cations strategies for the 1987 and 1992 general elections. Further,
such was the subsequent reaction against the modernisers under the
leadership of John Smith (19924) that Gould left the UK to work for
Bill Clintons campaign team in Little Rock, Arkansas. On his return,
he produced another internal paper 1992 Campaign Evaluation and
Implications on how Labour might benefit from the strategy and
techniques adopted by the Clinton team. This was followed by a
public piece co-authored with Patricia Hewitt and published in
Renewal in January 1993. However, once again his report, along with
a raft of memos written over the months which followed, met withconsiderable internal opposition. It was only after Smiths death in
May 1994 and Blairs election that his particular view of political
communication with its emphasis on marketing and opinion research
was finally welcomed.
As a result, party political communication has tended to evolve
in fits and starts. Invariably, it has had to await the emergence (and
re-emergence) of leaders both willing to follow expert advice and
sufficiently powerful to face down internal critics, the careers of
Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair being particularly important in
this respect (Lees-Marshment 2001).
At the same time, one should not forget that political commu-
nication is an art, not a science. Consequently, an understanding
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Historical Perspective 15
of the main techniques is only acquired over time, new ideas being
introduced, dropped and refined with each contest. Political adver-
tising provides one example of this. Though the Conservatives use
of advertising in 1959 was revolutionary (text was radically reduced
whilst photographs of politicians disappeared altogether), the actual
messages were still positive. Twenty years later and now under the
influence of Saatchi and Saatchi, the same party swept to power on
the back of the most sustained negativeadvertising campaign UK poli-
tics had yet seen. Thereafter, with one or two exceptions, advertising
has moved relentlessly in this direction.
Box 1.5 An uneasy transition: internal party resistance tomodern political communication
Politicians vanity
Politicians pride themselves on their ability to understand voters and
resent suggestions that they need help from people used to market-
ing soap powder and other workaday products.
Dilution of values and tradition
The findings of marketing professionals often make for uncom-
fortable reading. Invariably, they advocate policy, organisationaland presentational changes at the expense of historic values and
traditions.
The role of political parties
Some politicians Tony Bennbeing a particularly notable example
believe that parties must offer distinctive choices. This runs counter
to the advice of communication experts, who focus on the optimum
means of selling the party to as many voters as possible.
Leadership control
Modern communication concentrates power in the hands of the
leader. Others may resist this by promoting traditional mechanisms
for encouraging participation and leadership accountability.
Empirical evidence
When parties suffer unexpected electoral defeats, they often turn
on their professional advisers. This was true of the Conservatives in
1964 and Labour in both 1970 and 1979.
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16 Political Communication
Media management presents a similar picture. Whilst the use of
the sound bite was pioneered by Harold Wilson in 19634, it was
not until the 1979 general election that its close cousin, the photo
opportunity (or photo-op), became the dominant feature of public
relations. Thereafter, as Margaret Thatchers campaign manager
Gordon Reece had predicted, the power of physical images became
so compelling that they have come to dominate political communica-
tion to a point where it is suggested that party leaders are routinely
chosen because of their telegenic qualities.
The costs of campaigningSo far, discussion has focused on the uneven nature of change within
parties. Arguably, however, it is the unevenness of change between
parties that is much more significant. Finance holds the key to this.
Until recently, the Labour and Conservative parties alone demon-
strated the capacity to raise the income needed to deploy consist-
ently the full range of modern communication techniques. (The
one exception to this was the Referendum party in the 1997 general
election. Backed by the late Sir James Goldsmith, it was able to spend
unprecedented amounts for a minor party.) Notwithstanding the
inherent reasonableness of allowing private individuals to finance
their preferred political causes, the data in Table 1.5 are hardly an
advertisement for the equitable nature of British democracy. As a
result, the majority of parties only buy into the modern as much
as their finances and to a lesser extent their ideologies allow. This
creates an important caveat, which the reader is urged to bear inmind throughout the remainder of this study.
Targeting and niche marketing: a post-modernparadigm?
Over the last two decades party political communication has contin-
ued to evolve rapidly, so much so that it is now suggested that a new,
post-modern era is coming into being (Norris 1997). Post-modernism
was used by critical theoriststo support their contention that the
major political ideologies conservatism, socialism, liberalism
had lost their hold on the public consciousness. This has numerous
implications for party political communication.
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Table1.5
Selecteditemsof
campaignexpenditureinthe2001and2005generalelectio
ns
Party(year)
Party
political
broadcasts
()
Advertising
()
Unsolicite
d
materials
()
Market
research
()
Med
ia
mana
ge-
ment
()
Rallies
()
T
otal
Conservative
s(2001)
567,286
4,409,569
1,216,770
1,717,093
356,639
1,972,362
12,7
51,813
Conservative
s(2005)
293,446
8,175,166
4,493,021
1,291,847
448,277
1,148,218
17,8
54,241
Labour(2001
)
272,849
5,024,259
1,451,778
869,338
750,395
1,283,721
10,9
45,119
Labour(2005
)
470,218
5,286,997
2,698,114
1,577,017
375,410
2,916,969
17,9
39,617
LibDems(20
01)
55,353
196,595
54,287
66,016
230,787
73,917
1,3
61,372
LibDems(20
05)
124,871
1,583,058
1,235,295
165,185
105,793
68,994
4,2
34,574
SNP(2001)
38,794
51,723
65,127
2,971
38,551
5,597
2
26,203
SNP(2005)
41,607
40,411
30,165
26,090
28,398
1
93,387
Greens(2001
)
21,545
984
1,963
3,181
44,912
Greens(2005
)
15,944
106,738
27,179
694
947
1
60,224
BNP(2001)
-
BNP(2005)
3,173
235
106,303
900
78
1
12,068
(Source:Electoral
Commission)
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Historical Perspective 19
differentiated nature of political messages as being especially signifi-
cant. If one accepts this view, the great challenge for political parties
is to adapt to this very different mindset; to stop pushing and more
subtly pull voters towards the campaign messages they offer. Whilst
this thesis has yet to establish universal academic support, nonethe-
less it offers important new insight into the evolution of political
communication. This is especially so in the aftermath of the 2008
US Presidential elections, which with good reason have been called
the first elections of the digital age. The extent to which their UK
counterparts are also reorientating their communications around the
concept of post-modernism is likely to be one of the more interesting
features of British politics over the next few years.
Permanent campaigning
Such is the importance of agenda-setting that the post-modern
party increasingly regards each day as a battle to be won or lost. This
expansion of traditional media management into otherwise routine or
workaday events gives to post-modern communications the air of a
permanent campaign.
Campaign costs
The previous two factors also help explain the burgeoning costs of
post-modern communications. The urgency of finding additional
funding has persuaded some parties to seek support from non-
traditional sources, something which has caused controversy both
within and without.
Qualitative opinion research
Traditional quantitative opinion polling is now supplemented with
qualitative research. The latter is a further sign of the parties deter-
mination to devise messages which target the most electorally sig-
nificant voting groups.
Media fragmentation and narrow-casting
Campaign messages are communicated through a far wider range
of media, particularly the great digital technologies: text messages,
emails and web sites. More importantly, recent evidence from the
USA suggests that, if they wish to fully exploit it, political parties will
have to accept that digital technology will deepen the trends towards
decentralised campaigning in ways that their leaderships will find
difficult to control.
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20 Political Communication
Conclusion
This chapter has set out some of the main trends in the history of
post-war political communication. It has not attempted to provide a
comprehensive, leave alone a definitive, account. Such an undertak-
ing would be worthy of a volume in its own right. What is has tried
to do, however, is demonstrate that party political communication
is an increasingly complex and multi-faceted phenomenon which is
rightly a subject of academic interest. What academics and others
have made of it will be the overarching theme of the next four
chapters.
What you should have learnt from reading this chapter
How to identify the broad historical phases in the evolution of party
political communications, together with their distinctive features.
An understanding of the wider electoral, political and technological
contexts in which change has occurred. Why the evolution from pre-modern to modern can be described as
uneven.
An appreciation of the concept of post-modern communication and
implications for the remainder of this study.
Glossary of key terms
Tony BennA former Cabinet minister who became de factoleader ofthe Labour Left in the 1970s. Benns power stemmed from his position
of Chairman of the home affairs sub-committee of Labours National
Executive Committee until 1982.
Critical theoristsA highly varied group of scholars and writers who have
profoundly influenced the understanding of philosophy, sociology, politics
and a host of other academic disciplines in the years since 1945.
Dealignment The term used to describe the breakdown in established
patterns of voting beginning in the 1960s.
Philip Gould Trained in marketing, Gould joined Labours pay roll in 1985after being asked by Peter Mandelson to conduct some opinion research
for his Shadow Communications Agency. He then worked for Labour over
the next seven years before being sidelined when the party leadership
passed to John Smith in 1992. However, the election of Tony Blair two
years later saw Goulds return as the new leaders private pollster, a post
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Historical Perspective 21
he retained after Labour entered office. He was subsequently ennobled as
Baron Gould of Brockwood in June 2004.
Harold Macmillan Later, the Earl of Stockdale. Nicknamed Supermac,
Macmillan led the Conservative party as prime minister from 1957 to1963.
Lord (John) Reith The first director-general of the BBC and one of the
most influential figures in the history of British broadcasting.
Suez crisis The politically disastrous attempt in 1956 by the British,
French and Israeli governments to destroy the Egyptian leader, Gamal
Abdul Nasser.
Tronah Mines The case of R. v. Tronah Mines led to a landmark ruling,
as a result of which national parties were able to finance their own
campaigning without breaching the strict rules governing electionexpenses at constituency level.
Zeitgeist The defining spirit or mood of a particular era.
Likely examination questions
Distinguish between the pre-modern, modern and post-modern eras of
political communication.
In what ways might we say that the emergence of modern politicalcommunication was uneven? What factors might explain this?
Why is dealignment associated with the collapse of pre-modern
communication?
What explains the domination of political television?
Helpful websites
The Electoral Commission, with a wealth of information on the conduct ofelection campaigns, can be found at www.electoralcommission.org.uk.
Suggestions for further reading
David Butlers British General Elections since 1945(Oxford: Blackwell,
1995) offers a useful short introduction. Dennis Kavanaghs Election
Campaigning(Oxford: Blackwell, 1995) covers the same terrain in much
more detail. An excellent conceptual analysis of the three historical
phases can be found in Pippa Norris, Political Communication, in PatrickDunleavy et al. (eds), Developments in British Politics 5(Basingstoke:
Macmillan Press, 1997). Those wishing to explore the evolution of political
communication within the Conservative party should consult Richard
Crockett, The party, publicity and the media, in A. Seldon and S. Ball
(eds), The Conservative Century(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
?
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22 Political Communication
More recently, the history of Labour party communications has received
fine treatment in Dominic Wrings The Marketing of Labour(Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). David Denvers popular Elections and Voting
Behaviour in Britain(2007) offers invaluable treatment of the relationshipbetween dealignment and political communication, a work which is
complemented by Nicholas Allens A Restless Electorate: Stirrings in
the Political Season, in J. Bartle and A. King (eds), Britain at the Polls
(Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2006).
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CHAPTER 2
The Modern Communication StrategyContents
The communications strategy 24Tails wagging dogs: opinion research and the rise of political marketing 29Centralised campaign management 33From Millbank to Old Queen Street 37Conclusion 39
OverviewChapter 2 is the first of four chapters examining particular aspects ofparty political communications. Here, we focus largely on the preparationsparties undergo prior to major election campaigns. This entails anexploration of the communications strategy, the role of opinion researchand political marketing, and the nature of campaign management. Thechapter concludes by examining why some analysts believe that the highlycentralised communications strategies of the modern era are becomingincreasingly counter-productive.
Key issues to be covered in this chapter
The principal features of communications strategies, illustrated by a casestudy of Labours 1997 general election campaign
The significance of political marketing and its implications for the role ofpolitical parties in representative democracies
The War Book and communications grid as management tools The extent to which centralised campaign management is viable in the
post-modern era
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24 Political Communication
The communications strategy
The reality can be stated simply: no major British party would now
dream of entering an election campaign without a communications
strategy (Kavanagh 1995: 148). What, though, is a communications
strategy and why is it considered so important?
The greatest election campaign ever
Simply stated, a communications strategy denotes how parties organ-
ise and mobilise their communication resources in support of their
wider political goals. The first task of the strategist is to devise the
campaign messages on which the rest of the strategy will be based.
This can prove a painful experience, not least because communica-
tion strategists often insist on radical changes to organisation andpolicy, which many party members find difficult to accept.
Labours ground- breaking approach in 1997 sheds some light on
the process parties undergo as they devise their key campaign messages.
Prior to the election, the Blair leadership was clear about one thing:
Labours image as a party of the poor and of the past doomed it to
perpetual electoral failure (Gould 1998: 176). Despite public opinion
poll evidence that voters were disavowing Thatcherism, Labours
private research suggested strongly that the Conservative vision of an
ideal society still corresponded more to the Britain most voters wanted
for themselves and their families. For all their dissatisfaction with the
Tories, therefore, most voters did not believe that the Labour party
understood the nature of their hopes for a better tomorrow. A series
Box 2.1 Devising the strategic brief
On whose support can we rely?
Who else do we need to vote for us?
Of this group, who might vote for us and why?
Where do these people typically live and how can we best reach
them?
What are our rivals likely to say about us and how might we
counter them?
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The Modern Communication Strategy 25
of highly public initiatives notably the rewriting of Clause IVof
the partys 1918 constitution had been used to convey the impression
that the Labour party was ready to change and move on. Yet neither
Blair nor his advisers were under any illusion that these would be of
lasting electoral value. Too many voters still distrusted Labour. The
Conservatives knew this and would counter-attack accordingly.
Thanks in part to the extensive use of private opinion research,
Labours strategists identified the themes they believed would domi-
nate the forthcoming campaign. These were then used to constructthe five core messages that they hoped would neutralise the partys
weaknesses and promote its strengths:
Leadership
A party for the many, not the few
Box 2.2 The issues shaping Labours 1997 communicationstrategy
Labours weaknesses
A poor reputation in respect of tax, interest rates and inflation; fears
of the latent power of the Labour Left; and Middle Englands innate
mistrust of change.
Conservative strengths
An improving economy; patriotism; and a widespread view that, for
all their faults, the Conservatives were a known quantity.
Conservative weaknesses
The party had been in office for too long; they were only interested in
the needs of the (wealthy) few; they could not be trusted; they were
hampered by weak leadership; they had a poor record in managing
the key public services.
Labours strengths
Tony Blair was widely seen as a prime minister-in-waiting; Blair con-veyed the prospect of a better future and the desirability of change,
whilst Labour was perceived as having a historic capacity to repre-
sent the needs of the many.
(Source:Gould 1998)
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26 Political Communication
The future
Enough is enough (a comment on John Majors premiership)
Britain deserves better
These messages were reinforced by the decision to make a limited
number of very specific policy pledges. This re-emphasised the
theme of realleadership: Labour would not commit itself in opposi-
tion to any promise it could not fulfil in office.
The subsequent development of Labours propaganda, including
its political advertising, was dominated by the need to ensure that
these five messages appeared consistently and repetitively. Labour
did this so well that the clarity and directness of its campaigning
disorientated the Conservatives. In their confusion, they devised
three counter-strategies, before finally adopting New Labour, New
Danger in April 1996. However, despite attracting much media
comment, especially when the notorious demon eyes poster was
released two months later, Labour believed this to be the least
effective option.
Firstly, it confirmed their claim that Blairs party was new.
Secondly, nothing in its opinion research suggested that voters
believed a new incarnation of the Labour party posed any danger
at all: it was old Labour that worried them.
Thirdly, it threw out the timing of the Conservatives own cam-
paigning. Instead of admitting to voters that mistakes had been
made (especially in respect of fiscal policy and the public services)
before pointing to the recent upturn in the main economic indica-tors, the Conservatives went on to the offensive too early.
Finally, it gave their campaign a very negative tone and helped
Labours own campaigners convince voters that, after 18 years,
the Tories had nothing new to offer.
As the Conservative counter-attack floundered, it is unsurpris-
ing that a self-congratulatory mood developed among the staff at
Millbank: hence the title of this sub-section. It is, of course, argu-
able that Labour would have won the 1997 general election regard-
less of other factors. Whether it would have done so with a 179-seat
majority, thereby effectively guaranteeing a second term in office, is
less certain.
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The Modern Communication Strategy 27
The long campaign
Parties also prefer to test their messages via the long campaign.
This is associated with Ronald Reagans 1984 bid to retain the US
Presidency and was imported into the UK by the Conservativeparty eight years later. However, in addition to the all-important
testing, the long campaign also enables the parties to seize the news
agenda some months before polling. This, indeed, was the primary
objective of Reagans campaign team, which used the long cam-
paign to focus attention on the unpopularity of Democrat policy
on law and order and defence and away from the economic reces-
sion that threatened to reverse Republican gains among blue-
collar workers. This aspect of the long campaign has become all
the more important as rival strategists have shown a remarkable
ability to anticipate each others main lines of attack and counter-
attack. Consequently, they now vie to set the campaign agenda
some months before polling, both by impressing media com-
mentators and forcing their opponents onto the defensive (Butler
and Kavanagh 2006: 53). Theory and reality, however, do not
always coincide. This was especially so in 2005. Despite Labourslong campaign being nearly derailed by the so-called battle of
the books, it was too far ahead for these internal problems to
undermine its lead.
Box 2.3 The long campaign in 20045
The three main parties all showcased commitments designed to
appeal to their target voters. Labour promised help to first-time
buyers and promoted new employment rights for pregnant women.
The Conservativeshighlighted failings within the NHS and offered
extended relief on council tax for the elderly. In addition, Michael
Howard promised measures to control a number of unpopular
minorities: ill-disciplined school children, travellers and illegal immi-
grants. The Liberal Democrats commitments overlapped those of
the other two parties. Charles Kennedy pledged to increase bothmaternity pay and pensions for the very old.
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28 Political Communication
Communication strategies in the age of devolution
Devolution has also influenced communication strategies in both
Wales and Scotland, where it is now clear that the principal national-
ist parties focus their resources on their respective regional contests.
This is especially so in Scotland, where SNP spending in 2007 fell
just short of the permitted maximum of 1,516,000. In the process,
Alex Salmond and his colleagues spent 280,000 more than Labour,
780,000 more than the Conservatives and a massive 1,080,000
more than the Liberal Democrats. The SNPs strategy was hugely
successful. Its likely impact on a cash-strapped Scottish Labour Party,
which will be almost certainly compelled to fight the next ScottishParliament elections one year after a general election it seems
destined to lose, can be all too easily guessed at.
Table 2.1 Central campaign expenditure of the nationalistparties of Scotland and Wales (selected items)
Item Scottish National
Party (s)
Plaid Cymru (s)
2007
Scottish
Parliament
election
2005
general
election
2007
Welsh
Assembly
election
2005
general
election
Party politicalbroadcasts
90,726 41,607 22,500 2,233
Advertisements 494,642 40,111 78,814 15,105
Mail shots, etc. 323,580 30,165 86,714 1,882
Market research 178,705 26,090 38,063 14,613
Media 45,041 28,398 5,420 0
Total 1,383,462 193,987 261,286 38,879
(Source:Electoral Commission)
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The Modern Communication Strategy 29
Tails wagging dogs: opinion research and the rise ofpolitical marketing
New Labours communications strategy in 1997 is not merely of his-
toric interest. More than any other campaign, it illuminates the endur-
ing controversy over the proper use of private opinion research, which
has been for some years a key influence on the content, style and
means of delivery of party propaganda (Rosenbaum 1997: 147).
Box 2.4 Categories of opinion research
Quantitative polling
This measures voter responses over a period of time and can
be divided into two main sub-groups. Tracking surveys ask the
same question to different people at different times and are espe-
cially useful in monitoring or tracking changes in public opinion.
Elsewhere,panel studiesconcentrate on the same sample of voters
to gain more detailed insight into changing voter attitudes.
Qualitative polling
By contrast, qualitative polling explains why certain groups of voters
think in the way they do. The most popular method is the focus
group: a small group of volunteers chosen because of their indi-
vidual profiles. A variant of the focus group is people-meteringor
pulsing.This was introduced in the UK in 1989 by the celebrated
US pollster Richard Wirthlin and requires volunteers to respond to
clips on a TV screen by pressing buttons on electronic handsets. The
instantaneous responses enable pollsters to identify exactly which
visual, verbal or thematic components score and which are counter-
productive (Rosenbaum 1997: 173). It also allows the pollsters to
follow up with focus group- style discussions, though Rosenbaum
(1997: 174) questions the extent to which it has revolutionised
opinion research in the years which followed.
Psychographics
Wirthlin is also associated with a technique known as psychograph-ics. This works by attempting to place various categories of voter
into value-groups, the belief being that party choice is ultimately
determined by these latent values. This technique was briefly
adopted by the Conservative party from 1986, only to be dropped by
Party Chairman Chris Patten on the grounds of cost-effectiveness.
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30 Political Communication
Parties commission private opinion polls for two broad purposes.
One of these is campaign polling. Despite being used extensively
by the two main parties (Rosenbaum 1997: 165), it is questionable
whether it is of any real value. Secondly, and as implied above, its
other use is to design the communications strategy. For marketing
experts (Lees-Marshment 2001), this is an inevitable consequence of
the attitudinal trends and collapse of ideological difference discussed
in the previous chapter. Others are less convinced and argue that
the extended use of opinion research simply reveals the extent to
which some parties have abandoned altogether the educational-
ist mission which remains a critical part of their role in a healthydemocratic polity.
Opinion research and political marketing
This controversy has attracted considerable academic attention. At
the heart of the debate lies the distinction between two rival concepts:
political sales and political marketing. Those parties engaged in
political marketing base their political communication on the com-
pletion of four very distinctive tasks (Lees-Marshment 2001: 23):
Ensuring that their product (policies, manifesto, leadership) is
designed to maximise voter appeal
Evaluating all those factors which are likely to influence this
Devising a strategy to compete effectively with rival businesses
Integrating all aspects of the party around the single goal of
enhanced sales (that is, increased votes)
Put simply, parties basing their communications on marketing
never attempt to createdemand for their product. Instead, they use
opinion research to ascertain precisely what it is voters want and
design their product accordingly. It follows that voters will always
buy what is on offer, since the latter will have been carefully struc-
tured around their stated preferences. This can be seen in Box 2.6.
For the market-orientated party, opinion research (market intel-
ligence) precedes all other stages. Whereas the sales-orientated party
uses market intelligence to identify the best ways of selling a product
which has been designed already, its market-orientated rival uses its
intelligence both to design its product and, later, to adjust it to ensure
maximum market penetration. Lees-Marshment (2001: 37) strongly
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Box 2.5 Private opinion research and the 2005 generalelection
The Labour party
As was the case in both 1997 and 2001, Labour used opinion
research far more extensively than its two main rivals (Butler and
Kavanagh 2006: 89). Labours polling had three main elements:
The partys chief pollster, Mark Penn, conducted a monthly track-
ing poll from September 2004, complemented by a separate
weekly tracking poll conducted by YouGov.
Between November 2004 and March 2005 his predeces-
sor, Stan Greenberg, carried out quantitative research in 130
target marginals, supplemented by a multi-faceted focus group
operation.
Labour also continued its polling during the campaign. A 2,100
sample poll was revisited every 45 days from April onwards,
with at least 15 focus groups being conducted at the same time.
Three late changes to Labours campaign Blairs engagement
with voters via audience-participation TV and radio programmes;
populist initiatives on immigration and antisocial behaviour; and
the U-turn over the decision to marginalise Gordon Brown can
all be traced to the influence of this research.
The Conservative party
The Conservatives efforts were hampered by the decision of ICM to
sever its connections with the party after seven months, the contract
being awarded to ORB (Opinion Research Business) in June 2004.
ORB conducted tracking polls in 163 target constituencies focus-ing on those voters who had backed Labour in 2001 but had since
become undecided.
During the campaign it contacted 500 of these voters per night,
the results of which were collated every three days for considera-
tion by Michael Howard and his team.
Qualitative research through 90 focus groups was also conducted
in the target constituencies between June 2004 and polling day.
The Liberal Democrat party
The Liberal Democrats polling took more or less the same form as it
did in both 1997 and 2001: a tracking poll of target voters in the 40
seats the party was most determined to win.
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emphasises that the twin processes of design and adjustment will
inevitably produce something that is most unlikely to meet the needsof traditional supporters. Hence the need for an additional imple-
mentation phase, when the leadership aims to convince the rest of
the party to endorse a product which may challenge some of its most
deeply held beliefs.
The extent to which the UKs main parties consistently fit the
market-orientated typology is disputed, though it is worth noting that
Lees-Marshment herself was highly critical of what she saw as an
ill-conceived and half-hearted commitment to marketing in the 2005
general election (Lees-Marshment and Roberts 2005). Equally, it is
undeniable that political marketing has played a key role in the debate
over Tony Blairs leadership of the Labour party. New Labours exten-
sive use of opinion research during this time is a matter of record
(Lees-Marshment 2001: 184). This has exposed it to two criticisms:
Firstly, that it deliberately manufactured opinion research data in
its internal battles with party traditionalists. This is the view of
Dominic Wring (2005: 122, 130), who argues that the uncritical
collation of the views of focus groups chosen precisely because
they had rejected Labour was bound to produce evidence endors-
ing the Blairites clamour for change.
Box 2.6 The communication strategies of the product-,sales- and market-orientated parties
Product-orientated
parties
Sales-orientated
parties
Market-orientated
parties
Product design
Communication
Campaign
Election
Delivery
Product design
Market intelligence
Communication
Campaign
Election
Delivery
Market intelligence
Product design
Product adjustment
Implementation
Communication
Campaign
Election
Delivery
(Source:Lees-Marshment 2001)
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Secondly, and more importantly, New Labour has had to face
down persistent criticisms that the wholesale changes to party
policy that followed were made solely with reference to the views
(and prejudices) of its focus groups and the newspapers they
tended to read. Inevitably, such accusations were fuelled by unat-
tributed comments from Blairs team to the effect that [i]n the
mass media age, policy is there to win elections (quoted in Butler
and Kavanagh 1997: 61). Particularly galling to New Labours
internal critics was the ceding of whole swathes of political
territory on taxation and spending, public ownership and regu-
lation, civil liberties and immigration to neo-conservatives, evenwhen the latters position on these and a host of other issues was
very much open to challenge (Wring 2005: 16179).
Sadly, this is not the proper place for an evaluation of these
criticisms, though it is only fair to note that other observers dispute
that Blairism should be dismissed simply as a marketing gimmick
(Faucher-King 2009). More generally, it might be argued that even
the most enthusiastic devotees of political marketing cannot detach
themselves completely from their parties histories or ideological tra-
ditions. Parties have collective images, which give rise to popular and
enduring assumptions about what the electorate can expect of them.
Ignoring them courts disaster: party leaders and MPs would divide
against each other; the core vote would be alienated; and floating
voters would be left confused (Wring 2005: 24).
Centralised campaign management
The controversy over political marketing shows that the seemingly
humble communications strategy has the power to provoke comment
and debate, a point which also extends to the all-pervasive central
campaign management (Butler and Kavanagh 1992: 77). Despite
the association of campaign management with excessive levels of
internal discipline, much more is involved than merely keeping
people on message. Rather, the principal task of campaign manag-
ers is to ensure that their strategy and core messages are condensed
and reproduced in a format that will survive contact with the enemy.
This is a huge organisational and logistical task, made all the more
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demanding by the fact that national party organisations have increas-
ingly taken responsibility for constituency campaigning in the target
seats.
The War Book and communications grid
To assist in forming a communications strategy, campaign managers
have devised two important management tools. The first of these is
known as the War Book, which has been described as:
. . . a bulky file . . . containing daily programmes for press confer-
ences, photo-opportunities, rallies, broadcasts, schedules of main
speakers, advertisements, posters and other events. Each War Book
also contains material on the partys strengths and weaknesses, sug-
gestions for deflecting the attacks of the opposition, and proposals
for promoting favoured issues and themes. It [also] includes advice
on how to cope with known future events. (Butler and Kavanagh
1992: 77)
The benefits of the War Book are strongly emphasised by veteran US
Democrat strategist Joe Napolitan, who maintains that a communi-cation strategy must be written up in this way or else it will simply
unravel in the heat of battle.
A second management tool the communications grid works
to the same effect. This is described by Philip Gould (1998: 3356)
as the heart of an election campaign . . . the point at which strategy,
message and logistics all gel on one single piece of paper. The grid
sets out the timetable detailing the main events on each days cam-
paigning. In addition, it will identify and settle a variety of logistical
concerns. Typically, these will include:
identifying the main campaigners;
selecting appropriate venues and audiences for the campaign
trail;
dealing with the array of transport, accommodation and security
issues involved;
ensuring that the media are on hand to report these events;
providing effective photo opportunities and sound bites for televi-
sion news crews and ensuring these are delivered in time for the
main lunchtime and evening TV news bulletins;
reconciling the grid with the targeting strategy;
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coordinating the activities of those on the campaign trail with
those working in campaign headquarters;
acquiring a strategic capacity to modify each days campaigning
as events dictate; and finally
creating an internal communication infrastructure to ensure that
all candidates are kept fully aware of campaign developments.
The grid will also identify a dominant theme for each days cam-
paigning. This will be revealed at the daily morning press conference
and reinforced by those politicians on the campaign trail at events
throughout the day. The selected theme will be also taken up by thepress and publicity officers as they consider the most appropriate
sound bite and televisual photo opportunities. The net effect is that
the communications grid will be overlaid with a separate message
grid to which all the leading campaigners will be expected to
adhere.
Drafting these documents can be a lengthy process. Prior to the
1997 general election, Labours draft War Book passed through
five focus groups swing voters (switchers from Conservative to
Labour), women, first-time voters, the DE voters (Labours historic
core; essentially this refers to unskilled workers, the unemployed and
those solely dependent upon state benefits), and constituencies across
the Pennine Belt (Labours target marginals) before being handed
to the party leadership for approval. Further work was then done by
Paul Begala, a senior consultant to Bill Clinton. According to Gould
(1998: 3367), Mandelsons draft communications and message gridwas subsequently discussed at countless meetings and went through
a dozen redrafts between January and April 1997 before being
presented to Blair and Brown.
Flexibility and responsiveness
However, the hidden secret of effective central campaign manage-
ment is the ability to prevent strict adherence to the War Book
from degenerating into a dysfunctional rigidity. Consequently, a key
feature of campaign management is round-the-clock monitoring and
daily reassessments: the daily schedule only being finalised one day
in advance. The dominant theme is rebuttal: to anticipate opposition
(and media) attacks and have responses prepared. Similarly, where
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36 Political Communication
the data reveals that the opposition is on the defensive, the next days
campaigning can be modified to exploit this.
The business of review and reflection continues throughout the rest
of the day and night. In 2005, for example, designated campaign
staff worked into the small hours collating information sent to them by
national and local canvassers, along with their own assessments of the
first editions of the mornings newspapers. Their findings were then for-
warded to party strategists who would meet prior to the morning press
conference to agree the final content of the days campaigning. This
technique was central to the Democrats successful 1992 Presidential
campaign and has since been used consistently in the UK.
Targeting
This is the most important recent development in campaign manage-
ment, a point I shall take up in more detail in the following chapter.
For some experts the campaigns in the [target] constituencies now
dominate the parties overall campaign strate